United Farmers of Ontario

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United Farmers of Ontario
Former provincial party
Founded1914 (1914)
Dissolved1934 as an official party
1940 as an unofficial party
1944 as an organization
Succeeded by
Ontario CCF
IdeologyAgrarianism
Populism
ColoursGreen

The United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) was an agrarian[1] and populist[2] provincial political party in Ontario, Canada. It was the Ontario provincial branch of the United Farmers movement of the early part of the 20th century.

History

Foundation and rise (1914–1919)

Ernest C. Drury, UFO premier and leader

The UFO was founded in 1914 by the union of various farmers' organizations that had been created over the previous fifteen years.

co-operatives. In 1917, supporters of the UFO formed the Farmers' Publishing Company and purchased The Weekly Sun renaming it The Farmer's Sun
to act as the organ of the UFO.

The UFO entered politics by contesting and winning a

Independent Labour Party with the two organizations not running candidates against each other - the UFO contested rural ridings and the ILP stood candidates in urban areas. In total there were 64 UFO candidates, 20 ILP candidates and 10 Farmer-Labour candidates in the 1919 provincial election. The UFO platform called for the abolition of political patronage, better educational opportunities in rural areas, cheap electric power, conservation of forests, proportional representation and "direct legislation". The UFO also favoured prohibition and budgetary restraint, two platform planks that were at odds with the views of urban Labour supporters.[4] To the shock of everyone, including itself, it won 45 seats and formed a coalition government with the support of Labour MLAs in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario
despite having no leader.

As the United Farmers began as a

Ernest C. Drury.[3]

Government of Ontario (1919–1923)

Despite Morrison's objections, the UFO joined with other MLAs to form a coalition government. He had the UFO join with 10 Independent Labour Party MLAs (an 11th ILP MLA,

Premier and two of the ILP MLAs were in the cabinet.[5]

The government under Drury tried to be a "people's government" rather than a "class government." Drury himself called for the coalition government to be termed a "People's Party."

Drury's Farmer-Labour government created the first Department of Welfare for the province and brought in allowances for widows and children, a

Ontario Hydro and promoted rural electrification. It created the Province of Ontario Savings Office - a provincially owned bank that lent money to farmers at a lower rate, along the lines of "Social credit
".

It began the first major reforestation program in North America, and began construction of the modern highway system. The government was also a strict enforcer of temperance measures, Prohibition being law in Ontario from 1916 to 1927. Drury also arranged for a grant for then-unknown researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best who, with Dr. James Collip, later discovered insulin.[3][6]

The UFO grew quickly to 1,500 clubs and 60,000 members by 1920.[4]

Drury argued for a "broadening out" of the party to include labour and others, but in so doing, alienated some hard-line Farmers. Morrison, the general secretary of the UFO, remained outside of the legislature and government. Morrison opposed a number of the coalition's initiatives, perceiving the UFO's actions as a broad-based Progressive government rather than a "class-based" United Farmer government and believed that the party should not be in government but should hold the balance of power in order to force the government of the day to pass pro-farmer legislation.[5]

The UFO government clashed with the UFO organization (led by James J. Morrison), which eventually withdrew its support from the government. However, when the 1923 election came around, the UFO received 200,000 votes, down by 50,000 compared to the previous election. This was actually a higher percentage of votes cast than it had taken in 1919 as the 1923 election suffered from low turn-out.

By the time another election came around, in 1923, the economy had improved, in part due to the government's decisions. The Drury government lost most of their seats in the

Conservatives
. Drury lost his own seat.

Decline (1923–1929)

Harry Nixon, the last leader of the Progressives.

Though the United Farmers of Ontario remained the second largest party in the legislature, they were denied

Leader of the Opposition, despite the party having three fewer seats than the UFO. Morrison had announced that the UFO would be withdrawing from politics, which Ferguson had used as justification for the move. Manning Doherty, interim leader of the UFO caucus, could do nothing aside from win a ruling from the Speaker that, as leader of a caucus of more than 15 MLAs, he was entitled to an extra salary.[7]

Eighteen months following the general election,

Leslie Oke and Beniah Bowman refused to accept the leadership of Raney, a non-farmer, and also disagreed with the creation of a "Progressive Party" which would include non-farmers - with the support of The Farmer's Sun, they insisted on continuing to sit as UFO members rather than with the Progressive group.[8][9][10]
Bowman resigned from the legislature in 1926 in order to enter federal politics.

The issue which dominated Ontario politics in the mid-1920s was the

Karl Homuth
who supported Ferguson's proposals and would eventually join the Conservatives.

The 1926 provincial election reduced the farmer-labour contingent to thirteen Progressive MLAs and one Labour MLA (Homuth - who had broken with the Progressives and supported the government) while two new UFO MLAs, Thomas Farquhar and Farquhar Oliver, joined Oke's faction. Several weeks after the election the UFO convention voted to cease running its own candidates, though a handful of local UFO clubs continued to nominate candidates for some years.

End of the movement (1927–1940)

Farquhar Oliver, last UFO MLA in the provincial legislature.

Raney resigned from the legislature the next year in order to accept an appointment to the

Provincial Secretary in Drury's government, became the leader of the remaining Progressives. In the early 1930s, Nixon and the Progressives agreed to an alliance with former UFO activist Mitchell Hepburn who, in 1930, became leader of the Liberal Party. A group of four Liberal-Progressive MLAs, led by Nixon, were elected in the 1934 election, who joined Hepburn to form a government and were eventually absorbed into the Liberal Party. (see Liberal-Progressives (Ontario)
for more information)

In 1932, leading UFO member

Ontario CCF in 1932, but the UFO disaffiliated from the CCF in 1934 due to allegations of communist influence in the party.[11] The UFO nominated candidates, incumbent MLA Farquhar Oliver and former MLA Leslie Oke, accordingly ran as UFO candidates in the 1934 provincial election rather than as CCFers. The UFO, like United Farmers groups in the provinces of western Canada, decided to withdraw entirely from electoral politics though Oliver and Macphail continued to run under the UFO banner until 1940. Many United Farmers joined the CCF as individuals. The UFO's newspaper, The Farmer's Sun, was sold to Graham Spry and Alan Plaunt and became an organ for the League for Social Reconstruction
and the Ontario CCF.

In the

H.H. Stevens; however, many local UFO groups backed the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation[12]
and UFO MP Agnes MacPhail continued to work with the CCF on an informal basis. Other UFOers backed the Liberals. The Reconstruction Party won 11% of the vote in Ontario in the 1935 federal election, more than the CCF, but failed to win a seat in the province and only won one seat nationally.

In 1936, the UFO, the United Farmers’ Co-operative Ltd., and various growers and other agricultural organizations formed the Ontario Chamber of Agriculture which, in 1940, became the

co-operatives in Canada.[3]

In 1940, Oliver, the last remaining UFO member of the Legislature and a supporter of the Hepburn government since 1934, joined the Hepburn cabinet and became a Liberal. MacPhail lost her seat as the last United Farmers MP in the House of Commons in the 1940 election. She turned to provincial politics and won election to the Ontario Legislature as a candidate of the CCF in the 1943 provincial election while Oliver became Liberal Party leader in 1945.

United Farmers Co-operative Company Grocers

Around 1919, the UFO hired Theodore Loblaw to help launch a chain of cooperative grocery stores, but the attempt failed and Loblaw left to start his own grocery chain.

UFO/Progressive leaders

  1. E.C. Drury
    , 1919–1924
  2. Manning Doherty, 1924–1925
  3. William Edgar Raney
    , 1925–1927+
  4. John Giles Lethbridge, 1927–1929
  5. Harry Nixon, 1929–1934

+Leslie Warner Oke led a UFO rump of three MLAs from 1926 until 1929.

UFO Secretaries

  1. J.J. Morrison
    , 1914–1933
  2. H.H. Hannam
    , 1933–1942

Election results

UFO

Election Leader Seats Change +/- Votes % Standing Status
1919
Ernest C. Drury
44 / 111
 Increase44 248,274 21.0% Increase1st Coalition Government
1923
17 / 111
 Decrease27 199,393 21.0% Decrease2nd Second Party
1926
Leslie Oke
3 / 112
 Decrease14 15,417 1.3% Decrease4th Fourth Party
1929
1 / 112
 Decrease2 15,417 1.3% Steady4th Fourth Party
1934 Farquhar Oliver
1 / 90
 Steady 8,648 0.6% Steady4th Fourth Party
1937
1 / 90
 Steady 7,296 0.5% Steady4th Fourth Party

Progressives

Election Leader Seats Change +/- Votes % Status
1926 William Raney
10 / 112
 Decrease7 (from 1923 UFO result) 72,277 6.3% Third Party
1929 John Giles Lethbridge
4 / 112
 Decrease6 30,795 3.4% Third Party

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-136-61004-2
    .
  2. ISBN 978-1-4426-2248-7
    .
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Macpherson, Ian, "United Farmers of Ontario", The Canadian Encyclopedia
  4. ^ a b c "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2009-06-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. ^ a b Labour and Farmers in Ontario 1919 - 1932, History of the NDP, accessed February 13, 2008
  6. ^ a b "Free-trader, writer and farmer, former Premier E.C. Drury dies" Globe and Mail, February 19, 1968.
  7. ^ Oliver, Peter G. Howard Ferguson: Ontario Tory, Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1977, p. 158
  8. ^ "PROGRESSIVE GROUP CHOOSES MR. RANEY AS HOUSE LEADER". The Globe. 21 January 1925.
  9. ^ "PROGRESSIVE GROUP WILL LOSE SUPPORT OF FARMER MEMBER: Leslie W. Oke, East Lambton, Not in Accord With Baney Leadership CITY MAN NOT ACCEPTABLE". The Globe. 22 January 1925.
  10. ^ "BLESSING BESTOWED BY FARMERS' PAPER UPON L. W. OKE, M.P.P.: The Sun Approves His Recent Break With Progressive Group "ONLY POSSIBLE COURSE"". The Globe. 30 January 1925.
  11. ^ "C.C.F. Ontario Provincial Council Suspended: U.F.O. Withdraws And Will Stay Out; Philpott Resigns Agnes Macphail Retires Automatically as Her Repre sentative Capacity in Organization Ceases-- Woodsworth Calls for Reorganization Which Will Rid Federation of Communist Influence-- Statement Issued by Farmers' Secretary POLITICAL LABOR MOVEMENT NOW PLANNED WITHIN C.C.F.". The Globe. 12 March 1934.
  12. ^ "Liberals busy, CCF active, other factions hold fire", Toronto Daily Star, July 19, 1935
  13. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-12-23. Retrieved 2014-12-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

External links

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